Posts Tagged ‘chemical exposure’

For many who have had careers committed to safe workplaces, it’s a bit of a heartbreak to see that Dupont, once a pinnacle of safety, is now placed in OSHA’s “Severe Violator Enforcement Program.” This action is the result of investigations spawned by the deadly chemical leak at the La Porte, TX facility last November. The leak claimed the lives of four workers and hospitalized another. Sandy Smith reports in her EHS Today article, OSHA Revisits DuPont Facility Where Four Workers Died, Issues More Citations:

In his remarks about the enforcement action against the company, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels took aim at the company’s reputation for safety. “DuPont promotes itself as having a ‘world-class safety’ culture and even markets its safety expertise to other employers, but these four preventable workplace deaths and the very serious hazards we uncovered at this facility are evidence of a failed safety program,” said Michaels.

“We have concerns about the safety culture,” David Michaels, the agency’s director, said in an interview Thursday. “We expect chemical facilities where highly toxic materials are used to have a culture that focuses on ensuring worker protection. It appears to have broken down.”

In a May interview with The Texas Tribune, Michaels called the initial $99,000 fine “petty cash” for the multibillion-dollar company and said he wished he could dole out harsher penalties.

On Thursday, he said fines matter little for any company that large, but shining a spotlight on a company that has long touted a goal of “zero safety incidents” will send a message to employers nationwide.”

A must-read account: Up In the Tower

In reading accounts of the November chemical disaster, it’s apparent that this came very close to being much worse – not just for plant workers, but also the larger community.

We call your attention to Up in the Tower, an excellent and eye-opening article in Texas Monthly by Lise Olsen that dissects the events leading up to and during the tragic November day. It lays bare many of the failures, warning signs and build up to the day’s events. By painting portraits of the deceased workers and their actions, it also puts a human face on the tragedy.

Olsen outlines how Dupont’s fall from grace began a number of years ago, a result of many factors: pressure to increase profits for shareholders, corporate restructurings, high turnover with more experienced workers retiring or leaving and being replaced by less experienced workers. Dupont experienced prior safety failures leading to fatalities:

DuPont experts continue to deliver lectures at global safety conferences and make millions peddling their safety programs to other companies, with results that they say have been proved. But the corporation’s pristine safety reputation suffered after toxic releases killed two workers at chemical complexes in New York and West Virginia. One longtime DuPont employee was fatally poisoned in 2010 after cheap plastic tubing burst inside a shed at DuPont’s plant in Belle, West Virginia, dousing him with phosgene, a gas that had been used as a chemical weapon in World War I. That same year, an explosion killed a contract welder and injured his co-worker in Buffalo, New York. They hadn’t been warned of a possible gas buildup inside the tank they were repairing. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, a small federal agency that investigates the nation’s worst industrial chemical accidents, reviewed both cases and criticized DuPont. Company officials had failed to follow their own maintenance and safety rules, the board said. “In light of this, I would hope that DuPont officials are examining the safety culture company-wide,” the board’s former chairman John Bresland announced in July 2011.

OSHA is trying to compensate for the low fines by shining a spotlight on the company’s practices so an article like Olsen’s may have wider exposure than the typical OSHA releases, which tend to mainly garner coverage in trade publications. Certainly, the fines are little comfort to the surviving families, as Olsen notes:

The penalties and company assurances seem small to Gilbert and his family. He and his wife canceled the big fiftieth-wedding-anniversary party they’d planned with all four of their children. Their sons’ smiling faces appear in the family portraits that line their shelves and walls, but family gatherings are more somber now. Gibby’s widow comes alone; Robert’s wife is raising their young children without him. Gilbert has accepted that Robert died trying to rescue his co-worker. He takes some comfort knowing that Gibby helped save another man’s life and perished trying to save his brother. His sons died heroically, but, he says, their deaths could have been easily prevented if their employer, a multibillion-dollar corporation, had invested in upgrades and followed its own rules. “It wasn’t necessary for them to die.”

— Reader comment from our mailbox —

Good Morning.

I was the carrier claims service representative for E. I. DuPont de Nemours from the late 80’s through most of the 90’s at both the Belle, WV plant, as well as, Waynesboro and Martinsville, VA. In the conduct of my responsibilities there, I became somewhat familiar and was impressed by the safety culture at these plants. It’s sad to see this strong emphasis on “Safety First” deteriorate to this point.

I would hope that the pursuit of profit wasn’t a cause of this change in attitude, or the weakening of union influence on safety matters by collusion or desperation for jobs, but it’s hard to think of another explanation.

Later this month, UCLA’s chemistry professor Patrick Harran will face four felony charges in the laboratory death of his 23-year old research assistant Sheri Sangji. Harran is pleading not guilty to charges that revolve around his alleged failure to provide protective equipment and clothing, failure to provide training, and failure to correct unsafe working conditions. By way of background: In December 2008, Sheri Sangji was working with t-butyl lithium, a substance that ignites on contact with air. A drop spilled on her clothing causing an instant conflagration. She suffered second and third degree burns over 40% of her body, and died 18 days after the fire.
Our usual go-to source on this case is the blogger Chemjobber, who reported on some of the court proceedings leading up to these charges. He includes this statement from the trial judge

In court today, Judge Lisa B. Lench heard brief oral arguments from both sides, first on the issue to dismiss and then on the motion to reduce charges. She commented that the issues presented in the case were interesting and novel. She also said that Harran was unique compared with the usual defendants moving through the criminal justice system.

The judge is right in using the word “unique.” Employers rarely face criminal charges for worker deaths. Generally, in all but the most egregious circumstances (and even then…), workers comp is the exclusive remedy for employee grievances and OSHA is the usual path for safety violations. In this case, a fine was imposed on UCLA.
One of the other unique things about this case is the culture in which this accident occurred. There’s a strong “blame the victim” thread that runs through comments on stories, as well as protestations that the academic and/or the scientific arena is “different.” When we first read about and discussed the case,some criticism was directed at us for naivete, stating that health and safety personnel were unqualified to oversee “exotic” scientific protocols. (See our prior posts, More on the UCLA lab death of Sheri Sangji and Follow-up on the death of Sheri Sangji: a painful path to academic lab safety.)
Sheri Sangji’s death and the subsequent criminal proceedings against Harran have sparked a great deal of controversy in the academic scientific community – and on the more positive side, appear to have been a catalyst for a more serious look at university lab safety. Beryl Lieff Benderly of Science reports on a yearlong study of lab safety in nonindustrial institutions that was launched in May by the National Academies:

“An overriding theme at the meeting was the nature and size of the disparity between safety cultures and practices in industrial and academic settings. I have long heard from safety experts–and stated in my writing–that industry’s safety record far surpasses that of academe. Typical of this view is a letter by officials of three major industrial corporations, Dow, Corning, and DuPont, that was recently published in Chemical & Engineering News and was quoted at the May meeting. “The facts are unequivocal,” the letter asserts. “Occupational Safety & Health Administration statistics demonstrate that researchers are 11 times more likely to get hurt in an academic lab than in an industrial lab.”

Benderly goes on to explore many reasons why a safety gap exists in the academic environment – among them, a wide variation in or lack of standards, a high value on independence, the lack of a hierarchical structure to enforce accountability, and various cultural barriers and resistance:

“As a result, the report continues, “At academic research institutions, PIs may view laboratory inspections by an outside entity as infringing upon their academic freedom. … To combat cultural issues (such as fiefdoms) and bring a focus to safety within any given organization, it is important to ensure that the reporting structure allows for communication of safety information to those within the organizational hierarchy that have the authority and resources to implement safety change.”

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The Harran trial will be watched closely by many in academia – it’s a painful situation all around. The best possible outcome of this tragic situation would be a heightened focus on lab worker safety – and it appears to be having some effect in prompting greater industry/education partnerships to heighten safety. Case in point: the recently launched Dow Lab Safety Academy.

We’ve previously posted about the death of chemical research assistant Sheri Sangji, who was killed as a result of a 2008 UCLA laboratory fire. She was working with a dangerous chemical that ignited when exposed to air. Her terrible burns proved fatal some 18 days after the accident.
After numerous investigations, UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran (her supervisor) and the UC Board of Regents faced felony charges for three counts each of willfully violating occupational health and safety standards. These charges sent shock waves through university labs throughout the country since this was the first time that a U.S. professor ever faced a felony charge in relation to the death of a lab worker.
Last week, felony charges were dropped against UC regents after a plea deal in which the University agreed to implement a comprehensive safety program and to establish a $500,000 scholarship in Sangji’s name. The University will provide enhanced safety training and protective equipment across all its campuses.
Professor Patrick Harran’s case was continued until September to allow his defense to prepare a challenge to the credibility of the chief California OSH investigator. As the LA Times puts it, “Proceedings against a UCLA chemistry professor in the death of a lab worker take a strange turn when the defense alleges state investigator committed murder as a teen.” It’s a pretty bizarre development, one that is under much discussion in the scientific community. See Facing felony charges in lab death of Sheri Sangji, UCLA settles, Harran stretches credulity.
For ongoing developments in this case, we point you to the ongoing blog postings — 42 as of today — of Chemjobber on the Sheri Sangji case. Not only does Chemjobber provide excellent informed commentary and links to a variety of sources, his postings also include interesting comments from others in the scientific community, from both private industry and university labs.
In the wake of this tragic accident which has had widespread coverage, safety in university labs had really been under scrutiny. Despite the vast scope of academic research, it has largely been unregulated. This case may be the turning point in ushering in a new era of a “culture of safety.”
Below, a good video that the Chemical Safety Board issued in response to this and other two other tragic accidents that occurred in university labs.

CSB Key lab safety lessons and recommendations

Ensure that research specific hazards are evaluated and then controlled by developing specific written protocols and training

Risk roundup – Nina Kallen posts the latest Cavalcade of Risk at Insurance Coverage Law in Massachusetts – check it out.Mining – Joe Paduda talks about the growth of the mining industry, noting that it is up almost 60% over the last ten years, with an increase of 12% since the beginning of 2011 – a growth rate that looks like it will surpass the BLS ten-year projection of 24%. Joe notes that regulators, work comp executives and providers should be on alert since this growth will have a dramatic impact on selected states, citing North Dakota as one example.Disparity in healthcare costs – Dave DePaolo has an interesting post on the wide disparity in cost for cash paying patients vs insurance. He points to a recent LA Times article that cited numerous real world examples (routine blood work was charged $782 by the hospital, $415 by the insurer, and $95 if paid in cash.) DePaolo asks: “What would fee schedules look like if those in charge of these pricing decisions shared with payers and regulators all of the data that identified each friction point in insurance based reimbursement schedules versus getting paid cash?”Florida drug repackaging – Do the people who write the biggest checks to politicians determine the cost of workers comp in Florida? That’s a question many keep raising, and it appears so. In the article drug-bill battle is lucrative for lobbyists, legislators, Aaron Deslatte of The Orlando Sentinel talks about how Broward County’s Automated Health Care Solutions has invested nearly $6 million into lobbying to protect the practice of drug repackaging by physicians. Why should this issue be of concern to Florida employers and insurers? Joe Paduda offers a primer on repackaged drugs and the effect on work comp costs.E&O and workers comp – Workers’ compensation is the leading cause of agent in E&O claims, accounting for approximately 10% of all claims annually, according to Curt Pearsall. He notes the majority of claims involve the following issues: Questions involving coverage for sole proprietors, partnerships or single-member LLCs; Dealing with a broker to place coverage for that “tough” risk; Dealing with the state workers’ comp market to place coverage; Ensuring employees in all states are covered; Placing clients in a trust/alternative program; and U.S. Longshoreman and Harbor coverage.On reforming SIGS – At LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation Law, John Stahl offers a summary and some of the salient points of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions’ (IAIABC) recent report on self-insurance groups (SIGs): Regulatory Challenges Regarding Self-Insured Groups: Failures Prompt New Regulation. He notes that employers liked the low cost of joining an SIG but did not realize the potential liabilities associated with that choice, and that many employers made the false assumption that they were protected by state regulation. The full IAIABC report is available for $45: Self-Insured Groups for Workers’ Compensation: Effective Regulatory Strategies.CA protects hair care workers – Jon Gelman posts about a groundbreaking settlement in California that protects hair care salon workers. The settlement was between California’s Attorney General and manufacturers of Brazilian Blowout hair smoothing products that contain a cancer-causing chemical. In addition to paying fees and penalties and implementing safeguards for workers, hair care facilities must warn the public about the cancer-causing potential of the chemicals used in the procedure and must cease deceptive advertising.Poultry workers push back – Citing concerns over worker and public health, poultry workers, safety advocates, and groups ranging from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Council of LaRaza, to the American Public Health Association and Nebraska Appleseed all united in opposition to USDA’s proposed ‘modernization” plan that would shift work from inspectors to workers. At The Pump Handle, Celeste Monforton talks about this issue: Public health officials urge USDA to withdraw plan to ‘modernize’ poultry inspection, worker and food safety will suffer.A Request for Help Bob Wilson calls all UR hands on deck for participation in Health Strategy Associates’ survey. Learn more here: Your Opinion Needed on Critical Utilization Management Survey.Migration from Mexico – Peter Rousmaniere posts about a recent Pew Hispanic Center Report on Mexican migration, which states that, “The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants–more than half of whom came illegally–the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped–and may have reversed.”
Some of the factors cited as contributing to this change include the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.it would be funny if it weren’t so true – Cartoonist Jen Sorenson issues An Open Letter To The Supreme Court About Health Insurance.Death on the JobThe Weekly Toll.More noteworthy news

Female nurses who have occupational exposure to sterilizing agents and chemotherapy drugs are at least twice as likely to have miscarriages as those who do not have such exposure. Elizabeth Grossman of The Pump Handle offers a summary of a recent study on chemical exposures and nurses’ reproductive health, which was conducted by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The study encompassed more than 7,000 female nurses.
Grossman notes:

Similar effects have been reported before, but this is one of the largest studies ever to look at these exposures, explained Christina Lawson, a reproductive epidemiologist with NIOSH and study author. Because these results reflect adjustment for a number of variables — including age, hours worked, and shift-work — and because the study was designed to avoid overestimation, its findings may be conservative, said Lawson.

While further studies are needed to determine the exact chemical exposures, high on the suspect list are a variety of chemicals used to disinfect medical equipment and surgical instruments, such as formaldehyde and ethylene oxide. In her post, Grossman also talks about the dangers of formaldehyde exposure to beauty salon workers, an issue that was a recent NIOSH Science blog focus: Hair, Formaldehyde, and Industrial Hygiene. Both the Food & Drug Administration and OSHA have issued particular warnings about the Brazilian Blowout, a highly popular hair straightening treatment.

In March, UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran and the UC Board of Regents will be facing an ordeal they likely never anticipated: a court arraignment on felony charges related to a 2008 laboratory fire that killed Sheri Sangji. They face three counts each of willfully violating occupational health and safety standards. According to the Los Angeles Times, the charges are thought to be the first stemming from an academic lab accident in the United States.
By way of background: In December 2008, Sheri Sangji was working with t-butyl lithium, a substance that ignites on contact with air. A drop spilled on her clothing causing an instant conflagration. She suffered second and third degree burns over 40% of her body, and died 18 days after the fire. In the wake of this accident, Cal/OSHA imposed a $31,875 penalty, citing safety lapses and lack of training. (Chemjobber has followed this case diligently . See all his posts on the Sheri Sangji case, with the most recent at the top.)
UCLA officials call the recent criminal charges outrageous, saying this was a tragic accident and Sangji had been trained to do the dangerous work she was doing. But a 95-page Cal-OSHA investigative report contradicts that defense, saying Sangji was neither experienced nor well trained, terming the risk “foreseeable,” and stating that the death was preventable had Sangji worn appropriate clothing. Further, “The report states that UCLA, by repeatedly failing to address previous safety lapses, had “wholly neglected its legal obligations” to provide a safe environment in campus labs and that Harran was personally responsible.”
In the wake of Sangji’s death, we posted about this tragic incident a few times. First, we raised the issue of why university labs aren’t safer, suggesting, among other things, that lab safety be added as a criteria of evaluation for federal funding sources. We got some push back from commenters who thought that such a suggestion was naive and that health and safety personnel were unqualified to oversee “exotic” scientific protocols. We followed with a response to these criticisms, as well as provided links to other articles and places where the death was being discussed by students, scientists, private lab workers and safety professionals. (See More on the
UCLA lab death of Sheri Sangji.)
While Harran and UCLA are facing charges, this is apparently not a random or isolated incident. In December, Beryl Lieff Benderly of Science Careers posted Taken for Granted: A Blueprint for Safety Action Now. Here’s an excerpt:

Issued in October, a CSB report entitled Texas Tech University: Laboratory Explosion lays out in 23 pages of straightforward, nontechnical language what went wrong in a near-fatal 2010 incident on the Lubbock campus and what needs to be done to prevent anything like it from happening again.

The report goes far beyond the usual accident investigation’s list of technical mishaps. It views the maiming of Texas Tech University (TTU) graduate student Preston Brown not as an isolated series of individual errors but as the predictable outcome of a culture, set of values, and system of organization prevalent not only at TTU but also at many other campuses. Having collected at least “preliminary information” on 120 other such incidents, CSB declares itself “greatly concerned about the frequency of academic laboratory incidents in the United States.”

Academia has evaded some of the scrutiny that private employers face in safety standards. The issue of lab safety still sparks controversy. Many still think that the environment is too exotic and too specialized to incorporate safety standards and that regulations would stifle creative research work. That’s little more than obfuscation and foot dragging. Lieff Benderly posted another article Taken for Granted: How to Live With Danger outlining the contrast between chemical laboratory safety and that of another industry, airlines.
In The Sharp Knife of a Short Life, the blog Chembank frames the issues well:

“Changing the culture of an institution–especially one as intractable as chemical academia–is extraordinarily difficult. But so long as we forgo meaningful changes in favor of cosmetic ones that we don’t even bother to sustain anyway, we will continue to experience frustration and tragedy. One wonders what magnitude of disruption is necessary for our community to commit itself to improvement. Apparently, it is much greater than the death of a twenty-something student.”

We repeat a comment that we made in 2009:

Some workplaces come by safety voluntarily with a commitment from the top. Other employers – even generally well meaning employers – don’t truly embrace safety until they have had paid some very steep price. Sometimes that price is a gut-wrenching human one, as when a worker dies; other times, the toll is purely economic, in high workers comp costs, ruinous lawsuits, and bad publicity. Unfortunately, money is often the best change agent. That, and the push provided by standards and enforcement under OSHA.

We know that there are individuals with extreme sensitivity to chemicals. What we don’t know, in many cases, is whether exposure to chemicals in the workplace produces a compensable incident under workers comp. As with work-related illnesses (e.g., cancer possibly caused by workplace carcinogens), it can be difficult to prove that the workplace exposure is the predominant cause of the disability.
For a little over a year in mid-1990s, Deborah Chriestenson worked for Russell Stover Candies in Iola, Kansas. She had been diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivity in 1986. She worked as a plant nurse, safety coordinator, and workers compensation benefits coordinator. Her office was located across the hall from a laundry facility. Chriestensen contends that she could smell bleach on a regular basis in her office. She claimed to have suffered respiratory symptoms as well as increasing headaches as a result of this exposure.
Chriestenson also claims she was occasionally exposed to methyl bromide fumes emanating from a room where nuts were fumigated. In addition, she claims that she was exposed to fumes from pesticides, truck exhaust, paint, and anhydrous ammonia at various times during her employment at Russell Stover. [As for the future eating of chocolate nut clusters from Russell Stover or any other manufacturer, I leave it to the reader to perform his/her own risk analysis…]
Soon after her termination from the company, Chriestenson filed a workers comp claim. She received temporary total disability benefits. Her claim wended its way slowly through the Kansas system, until 2006, 11 years after she left the company, a split panel of comp judges awarded her permanent total disability (PTD) benefits.
There were two key elements supporting of Chriestenson’s claim: her own testimony and that of an expert witness, Dr. Grace Ziem, who specializes in chemical sensitivity. (Dr. Ziem’s website is full of red flags for toxic exposures.) Dr. Ziem’s testimony was key: without her connecting Chriestensen’s problems directly to the workplace, there would be no comp claim.Evidence-Based MedicineThe Kansas Court of Appeals has reversed the decision to award Chriestenson PTD benefits. While they recognize Dr. Ziem’s skills as a medical provider, they question her credentials to connect Chriestenson’s problems to the workplace. For one thing, Chriestenson is a lifelong smoker; Dr. Ziem casually dismisses any connection between smoking and Chriestenson’s respitory problems. In addition, Dr. Ziem did not bother to examine the medical records pertaining to treatment of Chriestenson in the days and months immediately following her filing of a comp claim. Finally, the Kansas court calls into question Dr. Ziem’s methods, citing court rulings in two other cases where her testimony was rejected outright.In Georgia:
Our research has revealed that several courts across the United States have also had difficulty with causation opinions expressed by Dr. Ziem in chemical sensitivity cases. In Mason v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 283 Ga. 271, 658 S.E.2d 603 (2008), Dr. Ziem was not permitted to testify on causation in an civil lawsuit against a manufacturer and seller of a floor covering product. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a trial court’s determination that “Dr. Ziem’s methods [are] based only on her own experience and opinions, without any support in published scientific journals or any reliable techniques for discerning the behaviors and effects of the chemicals contained” in the floor covering product. 283 Ga. at 279.In Tennessee:
Likewise, in Wynacht v. Beckman Instruments, Inc., 113 F.Supp.2d 1205 (E.D. Tenn. 2000), the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee did not allow Dr. Ziem to offer an opinion on causation in a product liability case arising out of alleged exposure to chemicals in the workplace. Although the court found her qualified to diagnose medical conditions and treat patients, it found that “[t]he ability to diagnose medical conditions is not remotely the same . . . as the ability to deduce, delineate, and describe, in a scientifically reliable manner, the causes of those medical conditions.”
Given her prior history, the lack of compelling evidence in the workplace exposure and her ongoing smoking, Chriestenson is unable to prove a definitive connection between workplace exposures and her current inability to work. It is a sad case, for sure, and it is entirely possible that work contributed in some degree to her current dilemma. But the burden of proof in this type of claim is difficult, often impossible, to achieve. For all her expertise in treating chemical sensitivity, Dr. Ziem has fallen short in her effort to establish herself as a credible expert witness – at least in Georgia, Tennessee and Kansas.

Joe Paduda is the man of the moment. His Managed Care Matters blog is worth a regular perusal for the informed commentary he offers about the medical side of workers comp. Today, there’s twice as much reason to visit because he’s the host of this week’s Health Wonk Review, in which the focus is on implementing health care reform. Check out this biweekly best of the health policy blogosphere!Violence on the job – This week, The Hartford Courant posts that the total work comp payout for the shooting at Hartford Distributors could set a record. The company’s workers’ compensation insurer is The Hanover Insurance Group. Reporter Matthew Sturdevant notes that families of deceased and injured workers have one year from the Aug. 3 shooting to file workers’ compensation claims and discusses state benefit levels. (See our related posting from last week about the aftermath of the shooting in Connecticut. )
In another corner of the world, other workers were homicide victims. The New York Times offers a tribute to 10 medical workers who were killed while on a mission to provide aid to remote Afghanistan villages that generally don’t have access to medical care. Workers included 6 U.S. medical personnel and humanitarian workers, one German, one Briton and two Afghans.Volunteer firefighter case – The Chicago Tribune reports on a recent Iowa court finding in a dispute between two insurers which ruled that a volunteer firefighter must be officially summoned to duty to be covered by workers’ comp. Justin Fauer died while trying to rescue his boss from a manure pit. In addition to being a farm worker at the farm where he died, Fauer was also a volunteer firefighter. According to the report, “The farm’s insurance company, Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Company, paid the claim but sought for it to be shared by the fire department’s company, Traveler’s Insurance Company, claiming Fauer also responded as a firefighter.” The Iowa Supreme Court upheld a district court decision that “…a volunteer firefighter cannot be summoned to duty by circumstances, but can only be summoned by the fire department or some other official channel.”Deadline reminder to 9-11 recovery workers – Ground Zero workers must register by September 13 of this year to be eligible for future worker’s compensation benefits if they are sick or should become sick as a result of 9/11 exposure. Less than half the estimated 100,000 volunteers and workers who are eligible to register have done so. Authorities urge workers to register as a precaution. Joel Shufro of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health says that “”You don’t have to experience symptoms to file for this …You may never use it. We are seeing so many workers now developing symptoms and some are getting worse. So this is a very protective measure, safety net, so people who do get sick in the future will have protection.”Popcorn Lung – Richard Bales of Workplace Prof Blog posts that an Illinois jury has awarded $30.4 million to a plant worker suffering severe lung disease from diacetyl. See more from on the popcorn lung case from the Joplin Globe.BP agrees to pay for safety violations at Texas City refinery –
Liz Borowski of The Pump Handle reminds us that before BP became synonymous with the Gulf oil disaster, it’s prior “claim to fame” was the 2005 Texas City refinery disaster that killed 15 workers. When OSHA conducted a 2009 follow-up investigation, it issued $50.6 million in failure-to-abate citations, plus $30.7 million for 439 new willful violations it identified. BP had disputed these violations, but last week, agreed to pay the entire $50.6 million.

We are following the consequences of the gulf oil disaster with increasing despair. Images of oil soaked birds, dead fish, and the serene Gulf waters transformed from the customary beautiful blue-green to an appalling brown. Our thoughts also turn to the men and women laboring under very challenging conditions to contain the impact of this man-made disaster.NIOSH has issued the following summary of the exposures facing the recovery workers:

Chemical exposures may include benzene and other volatile organic compounds, oil mist, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and diesel fumes. Physical hazards may include ergonomic hazards, excessive noise levels, sun exposure and heat stress. Injuries may occur due to slips, trips, and falls on slippery or uneven walking and working surfaces. Other safety hazards are associated with the use of tools, equipment, machinery, and vehicles. Biological hazards include possible exposure to biting or venomous insects or other animals. Psychological hazards may include witnessing traumatic injuries or death, inability to help affected wildlife, and fatigue.

You can read the CDC’s 96 page opus on managing the exposures to emergency workers here. (I can’t help but wonder if this particular web-available document is symbolically collecting dust on the shelf, like so many other well-intentioned but rather long-winded safety manuals – the ones risk managers point to with pride during a tour of an industrial plant.“We’re Hiring!”
BP has hired about 22,000 workers to help with the clean up. I wonder how carefully they screened the new hires. Any rapid ramp up is full of risk; the hazards of hiring on this scale for jobs full of open-ended risk is simply beyond calculation. How many of the 22,000 workers will end up with work-related illnesses and injuries? How would you project the future impact on BP’s workers comp costs? (Perhaps BP is calling the new hires “independent contractors.” Some may well be; most are not.)
Under regulatory scrutiny, BP has provided some form of rudimentory training and the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) for the new workers. But how well is the work supervised? With temperatures routinely in the high 80s and the heat index over 100 degrees, how long can people function in the requisite protective suits, steel-toed boots, gloves, hard hats and safety glasses? What is the impact of raw crude on bare skin and laboring lungs?Looming Epidemic?
There have already been reports of illnesses among these workers. Law firms have put out the word that at least one of the dispersants used in the clean up may harm workers:

OSHA representatives, Obama administration officials and others have expressed concerns that the oil dispersant chemical Corexit may be the source of the illnesses reported on May 26 by cleanup workers. In May, the EPA urged BP to stop using Corexit because of its toxicity. Corexit is manufactured by Nalco, whose board of directors has strong ties to the oil industry, including sharing at least one board member with BP.

We all feel a sense of urgency on an unprecedented scale as the pristine Gulf waters are sullied by millions of gallons of oil. A huge workforce has been mobilized to help with the clean up. Looming on the distant horizon is the cost of cleaning up the damage to those who are currently engaged in the clean up. It’s something we give only passing thought to today. But the time will come when those costs are as conspicuous and nearly as disturbing as the image of an oil-soaked pelican trying to spread its soiled wings, trying and failing to launch itself into the brilliant blue skies of its Gulf home.

Is the 100th time the charm? Cavalcade of Risk celebrates its centesimal issue today – that’s a lot of risk coverage! Our host for this landmark issue is Russell Hutchinson of moneyblog – tip of the hat to him for a good issue. And kudos to Cavalcade founder and visionary, Hank Stern of InsureBlog.Chronic Pain – a few weeks ago, we brought you one approach to chronic pain management. In Risk and Insurance, Peter Rousmaniere discusses the CT Workers’ Compensation Trust approach to chronic pain. This self-insurance pool of 390 healthcare employers introduced a a five-pronged program in 2009, which Rousmaniere outlines. He challenges readers to “consider how many of the five you or your vendors apply.”Uncovered in Georgia – a loophole left 88 injured workers without workers’ comp coverage on the recent failure of Atlanta-based workers’ compensation insurer Southeastern U.S. Insurance (SEUS) Inc. Normally, the state’s insolvency pool would serve as a safety net for failed insurers, but up until a law change in 2008, captive insurers were not covered by this pool. While SEUS had converted from captive to become a traditional insurer, 88 workers claims predated the conversion and are responsible for their According to the article, “Eight of those workers have catastrophic injuries and will need lifetime care. One has medical needs exceeding $45,000 a month.”

“Twelve other firms that operated under rules that exempted the failed company’s clients from drawing from an insolvency pool still do business in the state. And while they all now pay into that pool, 10 have claims predating the 2008 change in the law that required them to do so.
If any fail, workers with active pre-2008 claims could find themselves in a similar bind. State insurance regulators say they don’t know how many people ultimately could fall in that category. But they say they don’t think any of the 12 companies is in danger of failing.”

Mad as a hatter – On the recent release of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, the CDC reminds us that the phrase “mad as a hatter” originated from on-the-job mercury poisoning. To shape felt hats, hat makers used a solution of mercuric nitrate and, as a result, often suffered from agitation, tremors, slurred speech and other neurological symptoms – thus, “mad as a hatter.” Hat manufacturers used mercury until 1941. Mercury is still used in many industries and the CDC article has some interesting statistics, as well as a page devoted to recommendations, reports, and other resources for preventing hazardous exposures to mercury on the job.Fatal Injury mapping – via Occupational Health & Safety, we learn that OSHA has introduced a new fatal injury mapping module, which “…allows users to create customized, color-coded maps of injury-related death rates throughout the United States. It defines injury-related deaths according to intent (e.g., unintentional, homicide, suicide) and mechanism of injury (e.g., motor-vehicle traffic, fall, fire or burn, poisoning, cut).” CDC’s Fatal Injury Mapping Module. Other data and statistics are also available from CDC’s WISQARSTM (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System), an interactive database system that provides customized reports of injury-related data.NY crane deaths followup – Liz Borowski of The Pump Handle offers and update on the 2008 crane NY crane disasters. The owner of the city’s largest construction crane company is expected to be indicted for manslaughter in the death of two workers in one of the incidents. She also updates status on OSHA’s crane & derrick rule.Legislator, heal thyself – More than 70% of congressional offices violate OSHA safety standards – but the good news is that violations have dropped. “The number of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violations found in each office has significantly decreased over the years as well — from an average of about 8.15 violations per office in 2007 to an average of 1.75 hazards in each office this year.” (via Advanced Safety and Health)March is workplace eye wellness month – Reliable Plant offers some tips on eye and face protection. Other resources: OSHA Eye and Face Protection; NIOSH: Eye Safety; National Safety Council: Protecting Your Eyes from Injury; Healthy Vision 2010: Occupational Eye InjuriesBriefs